He’s right. But people also said that the internet and computers themselves take away a certain amount of the human experience too. I was told this ever since I fell in love with ‘playing’ on a computer as a child. I was told I was wasting my time and ‘missing out’. I sat and thought that I was seizing an opportunity to learn about these things, as we’d soon be surrounded by them everywhere we went. Whether for business or pleasure.

Then, when the Web and interent came along, I immediately connected and communicated with people all around the world (this totally blew my mind). Some of these people have become good friends who I go to stay with, or vice versa, in the ‘real world’.

Communication like this is so unbelievably powerful and incredibly resourceful, it almost brings a tear to my eye. Just about all the fundamental knowledge in various programming languages I know came from information from people on the internet, directly or indirectly. (I owe them all big time – and try to share knowledge back to this new ‘community resource’ as much as possible – and more in the future, in a more structured way).

I was invited to this IBM event too. Who me? Little old me? Sat at home on a computer? Yes. Me. How cool is that!? Unfortunately I couldn’t make it. We know the world is round, but sometimes we forget the time differences in a global forum. ;)

I had the pleasure of having lunch with Dana back in the summer too. All through connections made through work, which in themselves are a product of my online world. A great, smart guy. A pleasure to talk to.

Second Life provides us with a feeling of ‘proximity’ to people we communicate with and gesture to. It’s hard to explain. It’s not like the odd feeling you get having a video conference with someone, where you look into the camera or not. It kind of feels more natural in a virtual world. (For me, anyway)

This platform is so powerful it must not be ignored. The interfaces will become more stable and realistic as time goes by. The landlord of the metaverse of the future might not be Linden Lab. It could be you. It could be the person sat next to you. Whoever it is, I promise you it’s not going to go away. It’s going to get BETTER.

Embrace it. You will thank yourself for it in the future. And who knows, you might actually make some money and new friends and have some fun on the way! ;)

So, there I was last night,hanging around on the ‘RSS Platform’ in Nooribeom, watching the fearsome news of the ‘Real World’fly by, when none other than Hamlet Au, the ‘embedded journalist’ in Second Life (though not at Linden Lab any more) on New World Notes dropped by to check out the BBC NewsScreens I set up here. There’s a CNN one nearby too, by the way – next to the ‘River of News’ :) The screens read a list of feeds and loop through them, 10 stories at a time.
The good thing about the BBC News ones are the feed content has specific limits in the text entries. I happen to know that this is due to the journalists having to write stories which can run across many platforms. They have strict limits to the amount of characters for the headline and description text. This increases their value. On platforms with different text and size/resolution constraints, Flash is excellent at dealing with this, as you can embed fonts and that it is a ‘vector-based’ format, meaning you can stretch it any way you like and you will not lose resolution. At any size, if you do it right.

Second Life and the LSL scripting language presents many opportunities for an old skool web hack createc like myself. I frequently tell people that SL makes me feel as excited as I did when I first saw the web over 10 years ago. ;) And no, it wasn’t for all the adult content (though be aware that most technology developed for the adult industry ends up revolutionising the mainstream in some way) it was for the ability to communicate with other people all around the world. Connect them. Network with them. And even meet them sometimes. (I’m still great friends with a couple in New Jersey who were the first people I met through the internet 12 years ago, through a mutual appreciation of the band ‘The Stone Roses‘. I met my partner online too. 8 years ago!)

With easy tools to publish content, media, whatever you want to call it, along with easy ways do consume, organise, filter and rate it it, there you have it. Bingo moment. Democratisation of media. Open mashable consumption by an constantly evolving , iterative audience.

All this news about Bill’s movements along with other stuff recently has reminded me very much of the first email I ever sent.

I was the only person I knew who had ever even heard of the internet. I had no one else to try sending one to. I very much doubt it was ever read – but it didn’t bounce. And back then, well before inbox-overwhelming spam, you’d have known if it did ;)

Here it is/was: [Circa 1992 : Bristol UK]

To Bill Gates:

Greeetings from the UK.

[… a short sentence about myself…]

Twenty years ago people would have laughed if you told them that it will be possible to earn a living sat at a desk in front of a screen, tapping away at plastic buttons, moving a device called a mouse around on a soft pad.

IN TWENTY YEARS TIME YOU WILL BE ABLE TO EARN A LIVING SAT AT HOME, WEARING SPECIAL GLASSES AND GLOVES, CLICKING YOUR FINGERS WHILE WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND IN THE AIR.

MICROSOFT SPACE. MICROSOFT ROOMS.

Close the Windows, the room’s getting cold.

Now who’s laughing?

Thank you for your time.

Jon Kossmann

Createc.

Anderson & Lembke High-Technology Business-to-Business Advertising

Bristol. UK.

Who is this ‘kosso’ anyway?

I am a 'Createc'. A creative technologist, entrepreneur/ hacker/ geek. Worked on building things on the web for over 12 years.

Used to work at BBC News interactive and created the publishing and delivery systems for video news to get distributed on huge screens in major railway stations around the country.

I left the BBC to become CTO / sole-lead architect/developer at podcast.com for three years.

I have now left them to build a start up a new system called 'Phreadz', which is a 'Social Multimedia Conversation Network', integrating everything that is 'V.I.T.A.L' to us on the web. Video, Images, Text, Audio and Links.

I built the whole thing my myself. I programmed every line of code and positioned every pixel. I'm looking forward to attracting an hiring new members of the team to help me out! :)

There are currently over 1000 happy and helpful beta testers on the system so far and one client of a white-labelled solution.